Many flowable products, and more particularly liquids, are frequently packed in plastic containers. Once the contents have been used, the plastic container is thrown away. These containers have frequently been designed in such a way that they are easy to handle in the context of the purpose the packed product is to serve. As a consequence, it is desirable to find a way to be able to reuse these containers, both from an economical and from an environmental point-of-view, by refilling them with product contained in a simple, cheap and easily disposable package.
Refilling of containers for fabric softening liquids has become current practice. In general, these containers consist of bottles with a neck and an easy pouring, self-draining feature, whereas the refill packages consist of soft, plastic-like pouches. A number of attempts have been made to improve the opening and pouring feature of these pouches, but the resulting operations of opening the pouch and refilling an empty container with the liquid poured from a pouch remains a complex operation.
European patent application 0 082 778 discloses a combination of containers consisting of a canister and a bottle, whereby the neck of the canister is dimensioned so as to receive the neck of the refill bottle in inverted position and does furthermore comprise an insert which is provided to destruct the closure of the inverted refill bottle. Although this combination allows refilling of a container with the contents from another, closed container, without unnecessary spilling, it is important that the necks of canister and refill bottle be compatible, which is detrimental to flexibility in use of refill packages. Furthermore, other, very desirable features in liquid dispensing from a container, will have to be eliminated in order to accomodate the parameters necessary to achieve the combination disclosed in EPO 0 082 778.
European patent application 0 109 704, discloses a liquid dispenser package comprising a self-draining feature, whereby any product which is running down outside the pouring spout through which it has been dispensed, or from the inside of the measuring/closing cap by which it has been dosified, returns to the inside of the package. However, there is no feature which would facilitate pouring of product from another container, into the package.
In light of the above, a principal object of the present invention is to provide a package for flowable products incorporating a refill facilitating pouring spout.
It is another object of the invention to provide this package with a refill facilitating pouring spout while still retaining the benefit of features enhancing clean dispensing of the flowable product from the package.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a package which can be easily refilled from any type of container, provided this container is pierceable by the refill facilitating pouring spout incorporated in the package.